


Bloodhand

by notbug (KageKashu)



Series: Bloodhand and the God-king [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KageKashu/pseuds/notbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Edward's disappearance and presumed death, Alphonse is dangerously unstable, and he's taking Roy down with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodhand

**Author's Note:**

> This promises to get extremely disturbing, however, if you've seen Brotherhood, it's unlikely to get more disturbing than that.

Late August, 1914 

The armor sat still and silent in Roy Mustang's living room. Ever since Alphonse had come back - alone - from that god forsaken mission out of the country, the besouled armor had been sitting, mostly silently, in the same corner, and Roy was at a loss for what to do with him. The loss of his brother was tearing the younger Elric up, but he wouldn't talk to anyone. Roy was certain that Al moved, at times, although he hadn't yet caught him at it. They had lost Ed well over two months ago, and the colonel wouldn't be surprised if, one day, he came back and that feeling of life that animated Alphonse's armor was gone. 

As it was, he had an Alphonse shaped guilt statue decorating his living room, and there was no way he was going to be able bring home a date with _that_ in the corner. Not that he felt much up to dating lately. Sure, he worked to keep appearances up, but, even if the ladies couldn't tell, his heart wasn't in it. 

Roy stared contemplatively at the silent armor for a long moment, wondering if it would be better to try and reason with Alphonse - again - or take a bottle of Black Forest and a glass into his bedroom for the night. The ache in his chest lent its vote to the latter option, so he turned and walked into his kitchen to see if he had any whiskey left. If not, he might just find himself getting drunk off of the holiday wine. Thankfully, there was still a bottle in the cabinet, and he set it on the counter so he could pen a note to himself to get more soon. He didn't suppose he would feel like drinking again tomorrow, but if the current trend of events continued, he knew he would need it soon. 

Bottle and snifter in hand, he returned to the living room, intending to look in on Alphonse one last time. As expected, the armor didn't look as though it had budged an inch. If Alphonse were well, Roy mused, he would probably chide him for taking an entire fifth to his room, and on some level, Roy hoped he would do just that. However, no such words were forthcoming, and Roy retired for the night, disappointed. 

* * *

Time passed; Roy Mustang lost weight and no one commented. Alphonse remained a fixture in his living room. That is to say, Alphonse remained a fixture for a time. Roy suspected that he had never been quite as frightened as the day he came back to find Alphonse gone. 

He searched the house, and tried to keep calm, until a thin sound from the basement caught his attention. It sounded like... 

Trepidation filled him as he opened the door. There was a light on, down below, and Roy never left the basement light on. An odd, sickly smell assailed his nostrils as he took the first few steps down. It smelled like... It was something familiar. Roy was sure that he had smelt this before. Red and black viscous fluid spilled out from the center of a large chalk array, and all he could think was, _'Al, what have you done?'_

"Colonel?" Alphonse's voice was a quavering whisper, devoid of its usual ringing quality. "Is that you?" 

"Alphonse..." Roy began. He stopped when his voice cracked. A form, blurry, and in the center of the array, began to move. Gold eyes, bright and empty, and just a little bit lost, stared up at him from within the stained confines of one of his own dress shirts, and on the floor, soaking up the dark fluids, was a complete uniform, shoes and all, lying empty. "God," he breathed, "what did you do?" 

"Colonel?" Gold eyes blinked up at him. "I can't... I seem to have broken the light." 

_'Why would you do this to me?'_ Roy wondered silently. _'God, Al, why?'_

* * *

An alchemist's hands are supposed to fix things, Roy mused. A glass of brandy in a high class bar reflected his gaze back at him. How could he expect to fix the country if he couldn't hold together one little boy? He couldn't bring Ed back, although, God, had he been nearly willing to try, even knowing that failure awaited. Only knowing that it would never work, and that Ed would never forgive him, had stopped him. He brought Ed back once, he realized with a snort. And Ed certainly hadn't forgiven him. 

He tossed back the drink and asked for another. He didn't think he was drunk enough to go home and face Ed's ghost - Ed's brother - just yet. Perhaps, if he got drunk enough, he would be able to pretend that Alphonse wasn't there. "A bottle," he told the bartender, enunciating as clearly as he would were he sober. 

It was placed in front of him fairly quickly, but then the bartender wouldn't let him take it. "After this," she said, once she was sure that she had his attention, "you are going home." Grimacing, he agreed. He probably shouldn't even be driving, in his shape, but he knew he would anyway. 

An hour later, or thereabouts, he found himself facing a very familiar door, with little memory of how he got home. "Honey, I'm home," he called out, somewhat sarcastically. 

"You shouldn't do that to yourself," said a soft voice from inside the kitchen. 

_'Alphonse is in there,'_ Roy told himself. Trouble was, he wasn't sure if he wanted to see Al or not. "We all do things we shouldn't do," he replied, weaving in the direction of Al's voice. He reached the kitchen to find Alphonse sitting, head cocked (blonde hair pulled into a haphazard ponytail, eyes staring, emptily, straight ahead), waiting for him. "It's part of what it means to be an adult, realizing that." He should really write that down. Drunken wisdom, he liked to think, was the best kind of wisdom. 

"What are you doing?" asked Alphonse, head still cocked. 

Roy took a moment to look at the boy that he occasionally thought of as Ed's ghost. Al looked a lot like his lost brother, even as frail as he was. For some reason, Roy's breadbox was sitting on the table in front of him, standing on one end. "Looking for a pen," he replied. Finding the pen, he asked, "What did I say just now?" 

"Something about being an adult and realizing everyone does things they shouldn't." Alphonse didn't, Roy noted, sound particularly enthused. Actually, the way Al put it, it didn't sound nearly as good, so instead of writing that down, he doodled on the notepaper. 

"I don't know anymore," Roy sighed, watching as circles, perfect to his bleary eyes, appeared on the paper. "I don't know what to do..." When was it, that he no longer knew what he was doing? Was it when Ed had died? "I don't even know if I... If I..." He sighed again, gustily, and leaned against the counter. He was dizzy, and he wasn't sure how he had made it into the house, anymore. And he was seconds away from unloading the past few months agony on Al's ears. Abruptly, he straightened up. He couldn't do that. Instead, he would retire for the night, and view the morning with a hungover gaze. "Good night, Alphonse..." 

* * *

A week after coming into work still half drunk and having Riza straighten out his collar enough for him to look slightly respectable, he returned home, a paper wrapped, fresh bottle of brandy in one hand, to find the house even more quiet than usual. Setting the bottle on the counter, Roy wandered from room to room, flicking on lights as he passed through. He thought that maybe Alphonse was sleeping, and that's why the boy hadn't greeted him when he came in. It wasn't until he returned to the kitchen that he found the note. Trust Alphonse to somehow manage to write a very precise note to him, even while blind. 

All it said was, **Thank you for your help. I've gone back to Resembool to be with Winry and Granny.** It was simple, as quiet and concise as Alphonse usually was, but Roy read it again, hoping that he had read it wrong. 

Al had left? 

There was a glass within reach, and so was the brandy. While waiting for comprehension to come, Roy carefully measured out a shot. His hand shook, and he remembered something odd; something that he had intentionally put out of his mind at the time, and had no idea why it was coming back to him now. A uniform, soaking up blood near the middle of the array. It hadn't been one of Roy's. The shoes were too big, the jacket meant for a heavier frame. 

Why hadn't he asked? 

His hand shook harder, and he sloshed far more than a single shot into the glass, but that was okay. He wasn't sure if he was actually going to stop this time. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a wip that will be updated when it gets updated, but if you'd like to bug me in the meantime, with questions, comments or prompts, come and visit me at [my blog](http://asknotbug.tumblr.com).


End file.
